Hillary Clinton’s “Exit” Strategy

June 5, 2008

It seems the proverbial fat lady has finished her long, long aria. Hillary Clinton will exit the presidential race on Saturday, so we should have only 3 more days of dissection of her campaign.

I’d like to think that somewhere there is a front-page mockup of today’s Post with a “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out” headline, but today’s “EXIT>DO NOT BLOCK” sign gets the sentiment across without resorting to vulgarity. The subhead of “Kicking and screaming, Hillary ends quest for prez” is in contrast to the photo of Clinton, back faced to the camera and waving. That doesn’t look like kicking and screaming. That looks like saying goodbye. The Daily News plays up Clinton’s defiance as well with its “OK, I’LL QUIT” hed, which has a frowning Hillary next to the banner.

Inside, we get puns about “HILL FREEZING OVER” (Post) and photo collages of potential VP candidates (Daily News). Columnists like the Post‘s Charles Hurt dismiss the “fantasy land” Clinton inhabits, where she thinks she still has some control of this campaign. Hurt also bemoans Clinton’s “false sense of entitlement.” News columnist Mike Lupica also chides Clinton for her “graceless” speech Tuesday night and “acting as if the whole thing is about her.”

So now, we move to concentrating on presumptive nominee Barack Obama. The Daily News has some fun with the candidate with a feature on page 7 about Barack and Michelle Obama’s “fist bump of hope” during his victory speech. The News declares the kiss shared by the two onstage as “hot,” while contrasting it with the “not” smooch of Al and Tipper Gore from 2000. While some may consider the playfulness calculated, a psychologist tells the paper, ” “If it’s calculated, it’s a very good calculation…America wants to see what’s going on in the relationship.”

"More than any other contemporary African-American athlete, his ability to thrive in the pressure cooker of corporate America, while never making any embarrass­ing 'I’m not black, I’m universal' comments or selling his soul rather than just his visage, makes him a role model"

“Though his work for human rights is unassailable, the books grow worse and worse, the tales of his derring-do more and more farfetched. Finally, without at all forgiving him his lies, one feels sorry for Kosinski.”